Hornets' Gilmour makes most of second chance

Hornets' Gilmour makes most of second chance

As the Canadian players gathered in the dressing r

Kristin Gilmour overcame health concerns which initially led to her being cut from the Canadian women's under-18 team, to help the team win a gold medal at the World Women's Under-18 Hockey Championships in Finland. The Oakville Hornets defenceman had a goal and an assist in five games in her debut with the national team.

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Canada’s hopes of returning from the World Women’s Under-18 Championship in Finland with a gold medal had looked grim until it tied the game with just 12 seconds to play and then capped the comeback with a goal in the first minute of overtime, stealing a 2-1 victory from their rivals.

It was the kind of game players dream of being a part of and perhaps nobody in that room appreciated it more than Oakville Hornets defenceman Kristin Gilmour.

The 17-year-old Waterdown high school student was a rookie in the Provincial Women’s Hockey League last year. Little did she know that Hockey Canada scouts were watching her play. Last spring, an e-mail with the invitation to a strength and conditioning camp in Toronto came out of the blue. Kristin’s mom presented it to her daughter as a gift, framed and wrapped.

“I immediately tear up and start crying,” Gilmour said. “Then I looked up and both my parents are crying. It was amazing.”

The framed invitation still sits atop her trophy shelf.

Training camp was a series of fitness tests all day, every day — bench-presses, chin-ups, “just crazy, crazy amounts of testing,” Gilmour said.

And then came the frightening setback and heartache. At the May camp, she collapsed on the ice. Unable to finish the camp, she was sent home.

Doctors thought it was overexertion, but she spent the summer in and out of hospital when the fainting spells continued.

“I had two MRIs, an EEG, all this testing to figure out what was wrong because I kept fainting,” Gilmour said. “I fainted about four times and no one knew why.”

At the end of August, she was at the Hornets’ training camp when she fainted again and went into convulsions.

In the midst of her health scare, Gilmour received another e-mail, this time official notification she had been cut from the Canadian team.

“I was devastated,” she said. “I cried all night long. It was horrible. The next day, I got on the ice, you just push yourself that much harder. I was so close; I wasn’t going to give up. I practiced harder, worked out harder.”

In her youthful exuberance, she phoned Hockey Canada officials to find out why she didn’t make the team. Was she not working hard enough she wanted to know? No, they responded, it was her health.

With a strict diet and breathing techniques, she can control what doctors have told her is not an uncommon ailment among athletes, she said.

Meanwhile, Hockey Canada continued to monitor her progress with the Hornets. After consultation with and clearance from her doctors, she was offered a spot on the Canadian team in November.

Gilmour, who will attend the University of Maine next year, was determined to make the most of her second chance, but she was in for a bit of a surprise. Facing Hungary, which was making its debut at worlds, Gilmour was not expecting such a high level of play.

“I felt like I underestimated them,” she said. “I had to get used to the speed and physicality. They were better than the best PW(HL) team.”

Gilmour would make the necessary adjustments, though. On New Year’s Day, she picked up her first point assisting on a goal in a win over Germany. In the semifinal, she took a pass from her defensive partner, Halli Krzyzaniak, and fired a wrist shot past the Swedish goalie to open the scoring in a 7-2 Canada win.

Twenty-four hours later, the Canadian squad was watching precious seconds tick away but Gilmour knew they could pull out a win.

“Honestly, you play games where you doubt you’re going to win,” she said. “But I never had a single doubt that we were going to win that game.”

Arriving home Sunday, Gilmour didn’t even have time to add her gold medal to her trophy shelf. When team’s plane touched down at 12:30 after a trans-Atlantic flight, she grabbed her hockey bag, ran through the airport and went directly to a Brampton arena. Arriving just before warm-ups, she joined the Hornets and picked up an assist in a 3-3 tie.

Reuniting with her teammates was one more opportunity she just didn’t want to miss.